The content standards reform movement and the accountability movement that have occurred over the past 10 to 20 years have received much attention among educational professionals and the general public. The federal government legislated accountability measures with the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2000. The Pennsylvania Department of Education adopted content standards and state proficiency assessments in reading and mathematics to meet the federal regulations. The Department also established proficiency targets on those assessments for all students. For this dissertation I studied the mathematics programs in four selected public school districts in Pennsylvania to determine the extent to which the development of content standards and the implementation of accountability measures influenced the mathematics course offerings. I compared published course offering data, where available, for a 10 year period. In addition, local mathematics program experts were interviewed regarding the mathematics programs in their schools and the qualitative data was interpreted with regard to influences on the mathematics programs. Current practices and trends in mathematics course offering are provided and the influences of content standards and the accountability movement are discussed. I was also interested in the extent to which ability group tracking existed, intersected with course offering and course taking patterns. I collected and interpreted data regarding the practices associated with placing students in mathematics courses and sequences of courses based on their shared ability (homogeneous grouping). Ability group tracking in mathematics is utilized in all four participating districts and the practices used to place students in ability group tracks are described. Findings of this study show similarities and differences in the four districts and how they have utilized the revision to content standards, the accountability movement, and in some cases community standards to make changes in their course offerings. However, early identification of math abilities may be confining the potential for many students to engage in more advanced mathematics. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]